supposed still to give them delight. The implied conceptions
long survive.'

"Some of our readers may recall the attacks upon Spencer, and even upon
clergymen otherwise orthodox, like the late Frederick William Farrar,
who doubted the doctrine of eternal torture."

* * * * *

We hope we are beginning to survive such false and horrible ideas. Those
ferocious representations are the very contrary of the truth. To get the
truest conceptions of God, we have to think of man at his highest; and
even then we are as far below the reality as the earth is below the
stars. We are made in the image of God, however, and are a human
transcript of the divine. But we are finite at our best, while God is
infinite. Beyond all human thought His love is strong, and tender, and
unchangeable. He is veritably our Father, and I think He is so in a far
closer relation than mere creation. If we can think of the possibility
of delight in torturing our children, ten thousand times more repugnance
would God have in torturing us, except for a time, and for the highest
and wisest ends.

* * * * *

If we go back to medieval times we have the most revolting pictures of
the agonies of hell. We are told, for instance, of a certain monk who in
the course of his journeys came to the underworld, and there he found "a
fiery glen 'darkened with the mists of death,' and covered with a great
lid, hotter than the fires themselves. On the lid sat a huge multitude
of souls, burning, 'till they were melted, like garlic in a pan with the